


Hold it Against Your Bones

by auselysium



Category: Hollyoaks
Genre: Angst, Happy Ending, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, mentions of stendan, not crack fic I just suck at descriptions, past Mchay, present day mcdean, present starry, soaps are soaps and hollyoaks is especially soapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-06-06 11:18:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6751813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auselysium/pseuds/auselysium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's New Years Eve the week after Ste chose Harry but John Paul's fine celebrating the new year alone with his son.  Or at least he has himself convinced that he is.  </p><p>But then his phone rings.  A drunk dial from someone he least expects.  </p><p>Then a week later, he comes home to see Craig Dean having tea with his mum, asking him how he's doing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> To live in this world you must be able to do three things to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. - Mary Oliver

**December 31st, 2015. 23:59**

The light of the telly flickers, near silent, in the McQueen living room. The happy throngs gathered along the edge of the Thames, ready to ring in the the start of a new year, seem much farther away to John Paul than just the kilometers between Hollyoaks and London.

He pops the cork on a champagne bottle; he pours it into a tea mug, foregoing the fancy stemware tonight.  But even in their meager receptacle, the bubbles hiss and effervesce.

He watches the final seconds of 2015 tick away before fireworks explode over the river on screen accompanied by Big Ben’s solemn toll.

“Good riddance,” he mumbles softly before silently toasting himself and taking a sip. He’d sprung for the good stuff a week previous, hoping he’d have something to celebrate. Someone to celebrate with.

But instead he rings in the new year alone.

Well, not really alone. Not completely. John Paul sits back down on the couch and as if sensing his return, the small figure, curled up fast asleep on the couch, nuzzles back into his warmth. John Paul lifts the heavy, curl-laden head and lets it rest on his thigh, running his hands down the length of his back to sooth his son to sleep once more.

“Happy New Year, little man,” John Paul says, tucking the blanket back around his fuzzy, Spider-man pajama feet.

He takes another sip of champagne, letting his head fall back on the couch. He’d promised Matthew that he could stay up all the way until midnight. They’d feasted on pizza and Thomas the Tank Engine episodes.  He's been asleep at John Pauls side since 9.

Any time now McQueen’s of all ages would be returning home in various stakes of drunkenness - laughing, crying, carrying on - depending on how their nights had gone. So he savors the silence, this quiet moment with just him and Matthew. He tries to hold onto it, let himself be aware of how quickly time has passed already in his son’s life. He tries to be present, there at the turning of the year, with his child. He tries see the tenderness of this peaceful moment.

Yet he cannot help but feel the loneliness of the moment, too. Cannot help but think of how different his life had been only one year ago. Full of love and bright with the future.

When his phone lights up, he rushes to cut off the jangling, the noise suddenly a brash scream into the quietude, answering the call before he even looks at the number.

“Happy New Year,” he says in a way that he hopes sounds jovial. No one else needs to be dealing with John Paul’s broken heart.

He expects a hearty greeting from his mum or nan. A returned salutation from Nancy.

Instead, he’s met with nothing but the background of the call, sounds of celebrating - noise makers, whoops of joy - so he knows the call hasn’t been dropped.

“Hello,” he says again as his heart begins to beat heavier in his chest. He can’t help but hope that it might just be Ste calling to say he’s changed his mind...

But instead he’s met with a voice from another time. Another place. A voice so familiar, belonging to someone he had loved so fiercely for so long, that the very sound of it manages to erase the words Stephen Hay, along with any heartache associated with that name, from his mind.

“John Paul?” The voice asks.

His heart thuds against his ribs.

“Craig.”

*

He slips out from under Matthew and into the kitchen.

“Are you still there?” He asks, keeping his voice low.

“Yeah, shit...I didn’t mean to, I thought I was…”

Craig’s voice fades in and out as he takes the phone away from his face, presumably to look at the screen. But then as if realizing how much of an asshole finishing that sentence will make him sound, he changes tactic. “God, John Paul, Happy New Year.”

“Yeah, Happy New Year,” John Paul says, disoriented, only realizing after he’s said it that he’d already wished him a happy new year. “How are you?” He asks as the line goes silent again, save for the sounds of the party on Craig’s end. “Sounds like you’re having a good time.”

“Well you know,” Craig says. “New year, new start, all that.”

He’s drunk, but not mopey, angry, bitter drunk. Happy, silly, up-for anything drunk. God they’d had some great times together with _that_ Craig.

“How about you? Big night out?”

“No, the opposite actually.”

“Ah, quiet night in?”  He says, a sly edge to his voice.

“Something like that,” John Paul says, looking back over his shoulder at the son Craig forgot.

“How have you been?” Craig asks, his voice raised so he can hear himself over the din, completely oblivious.

The honest answer is far too complicated and besides Craig has no need to know.  John Paul laughs softly to himself.

“I’m fine.”

The sound of another party goer coming to wish Craig a happy new year nearly overwhelms the line. And that is when the annoyance sets in. Craig had clearly drunk dialed him with zero actual intention of speaking to him this New Year’s Eve. And after all this time, all the distance between them, there is nothing about John Paul’s life that can hold Craig’s interest.

“Look,” he says, “I’ll let you go.”

“Yeah, I should…” Craig trails off. But then his voice changes, softens. “Look, John Paul, it was really good to hear your voice again. I mean that.”

“Yeah, you too.” John Paul says, but only because it’s the polite thing to say.

“Take care of yourself, mate.”

John Paul tries not to injure his eyes when he rolls them as the line goes dead.


	2. Chapter 2

**January 6, 2016. 2:29pm**

They say coming home is easy. That home will always be there for you. Bull shit. Sometimes coming home is really fucking hard.

It’s hard when so many of the people who made home comforting, familiar and safe are gone. When the places you used to go to have changed to the point of being unrecognizable or are simply vanished. It’s hard when home doesn’t look or feel like your memories anymore, when it feels like something completely new.

Craig supposes that must be the risk you run when you grow up and move away. You leave home to fade away in your absence.

Even so, the feeling deep in his chest as he stands in front of the McQueen house, his face tucked down deep into his scarf against the cold, feels desperately familiar.

He lifts his hand to knock, when he’s hit with another bout of uncertainty. Did he really fly all the way from Dublin a week a after a drunken phone call to visit his ex? What if John Paul doesn’t even live here anymore? Even though he’d called him on his cell, he could be living in Cardiff or Minnesota or Bangladesh by know for all Craig knows.

Then there is of course there is the very possible reality that John Paul will want absolutely nothing to do with him if he even is here. After the way things ended between them all those years before, that outcome is less a concern for Craig, but a reality he has accepted.

Nearly 4 years. The size of that number hurts. 

But something in his gut had told him coming back here was the right thing to do. New year, new start, right?

He lifts his gloved hand and knocks.

After a few moments a young girl opens the door. She looks like she’s been crying, tear tracks staining her beautiful, freckled cheeks.

“Can I help you?” She asks.

“Yeah, um,” Craig says, adjusting awkwardly on his feet. “Does John Paul McQueen still live here?”

“Yeah, who’s asking?”

“Is he in?” Craig asks, deflecting the question.

“No, he’s up at school.” When Craig looks confused she continues with a healthy dose of teenage attitude. “You know, at work. Teaching.”

“Shouldn’t you be there too, young lady?” A familiar voice says from behind the door.

“I’ve got last period free,” she contests with a huff before relinquishing her place in the doorway and rushing up stairs.

A familiar face to match the voice takes her place. And along with that face comes a familiar amount of disappointment and disgust.

“As I live and breath,” she begins slowly. “Craig Dean.” She crosses her arms across her chest. Giving him a long look up and down, her expression little more than sour. “You have got to be bloody kidding me.”

“Hello, Myra,” Craig says with an attempt at an apologetic smile. “How are you?”

“No better for seeing you stood on my doorstep.”

“I know,” Craig says, quickly bracing his hand on the door when she tries to shut it. “I just...I wanted to come see John Paul.”

“Why would you possibly want that?”

“I spoke to him, on New Year’s...”

“You what?  He didn’t mention it.”

“Well, it was just a short conversation. But even so, I thought we were long overdue for a chat…”

“How kind of you,” Myra says snidely. “And you really think you showing up here after, unannounced after all these years that he’s really going to be up for a 'chat'?”

Craig gives her a look, begging her not to turn things nasty.

“I’d like to think so.”

And even Myra can appreciate the sincerity.

“Look, can I just come in?”

He knows how much he’s hurt John Paul and in all the countless ways. He also knows just how fiercely Myra will protect any of her children. But after a few moments, she lets out a long resigned sigh.

“I did just put the kettle on,” She says with a jerk of her head back towards the kitchen. Craig looks inside the house and it’s exactly as he remembers. But then a fire-engine red nail is in his face, disrupting the view.

“I’m not letting you in because I like you or I’m glad you’re here. Or I think you’ve ever been any but trouble for my John Paul. I’m just doing it because it’s sodding freezing out there and it’s the proper, English thing to do. You understand?”

Craig snickers before sobering his expression. Perhaps home hasn’t changed that much after all.

“Of course,” he says and that seems enough to placate her for now.

*  
**January 6, 2016. 3:17pm**

A dry, icy wind rushes around John Paul’s neck and through the thin fabric of his gloves as he rushes through the front gate. Even desperate to escape the cold, he stops to pick up the post from the box.

Bills, leaflets for after-holiday sales. He goes through the lot as he opens the front door.

A brightly colored post card catches his eye. Brilliant sun over a sandy beach.

“Mum, you got a note from that cousin of yours in India,” he says as he kicks the door closed behind him. “She sends her season's greetings. Didn’t even know they celebrated Christmas there,” he adds to himself as he continues considering the card. A day at the beach sounds positively perfect right about now.

He drops the mail and slings his bag from off his shoulders, depositing his coat on top of it on the couch.

“Mum?” He calls again as he finally rounds the corner of the kitchen.

This is what it must feel like to be shot.

“Hello, John Paul.”

To be so completely stunned that nothing your eyes or ears are processing make sense anymore. Immobilized by confusion and pain. _Pain_. How can just seeing him in his kitchen actually hurt?

Craig stands up from where he had been drinking a cup of tea with Moira. Craig and Moira. Sat together. Tea. It does not compute. Someone might as well have shown him a scene of a whale figure skating. Craig slips his hands into the pockets of his jeans and looks at his shoes. When he looks up, he smiles at John Paul - the lines at the corners of his eyes, crinkling a little more deeply than the last time he’d seen him. It’s a look of such reigned-in joy that it makes John Paul nauseous.

“You alright?”

“What the hell is this?” He stutters on a shaky breath.

“I was just having a chat with your mum,” he says as if that isn’t the most insane thing in the entire universe.

“Did you do this?” John Paul says, looking to Myra. He trembles. From what though? Adrenaline. Anxiety. Anger. Elation. All of the above.

“I swear to you, love, he just showed up.”

“I figured I was long overdue for a visit.”

That voice. That face. Those dark, steady eyes. That long, narrow frame. That inescapable ego. The days and months and years spent loving, needing, that man. The heartache that always seemed to follow.

“I’ve got to go pick of Matthew from nursery.”

He doesn’t even bother putting his coat on, too eager to get out the door.  He only stops to shove it over his shoulders once the fierce, cutting wind hits his face outside, making his sudden tears fall all the harder.

Back inside, Craig turns back to Myra who gives him a completely unsympathetic look.

“Well, what did you bloody expect?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this has been so slow in updating. I'm officially on my summer schedule now so I hope to have it finished VERY soon. ;)

January 6, 2016. 9:10pm

Several hours, many hugs from the little guy at bedtime, and a healthy serving of Scotch later John Paul finally feels less rattled.

Craig Dean.

 

In his house.

Again.

_How?_

It would be a lie to say his mind hadn’t drifted once or twice or a thousand times in the intervening days since that accidental phone call on New Year's Eve. He'd be lying to say he hadn't fallen asleep several nights in his bed, only to wake up, half expecting to open his eyes on that ancient Dublin flat, dark wood walls, rickety floors and all, because his dreams had been full of it.

Seeing Craig that afternoon had been enough to throw him completely off kilter. As if those dreams had found a way to his waking life.  He was so distracted, that even Matthew, with all his toddler intuition, had asked if Daddy was alright.

Well, he is now. He's ready to put Craig’s unexplained apparition into the same pile of memories, forgotten along with the rest of the life he'd shared with Craig.

He’s settled on the sofa now, his feet up, tucked in with a stack of quizzes on _Measure for Measure_ , along with another stiff drink.

He marks a failing grade, tisking disparagingly at his student’s lack of effort, when the doorbell rings. He pushes the remainder of the quizzes off his lap and opens the door.

He should have known that Craig would be on the other side, stood on his doorstep for the second time that day, full of that insufferable arrogance.

“Hi.” Craig says, mildly.

John Paul presses his hand on the door frame.  The Scotch has already begun to work it's magic, and he finds himself in need of that extra support.

“Why are you here?”  He exhales.

Craig shrugs, his hands in his coat pockets. “I meant what I said when we talked on the phone. It was good to hear your voice again. And it made me realize how long it’s been since I saw you. Since we'd talked, even.  So, I had some time off, wanted to see mum."  He shrugs again, as if this no big deal.  "I thought I’d come back for a visit. See how you’ve been doing.”

“Seriously?” John Paul says flatly.

“Well, I’m here aren’t I?”

John Paul knows it’s weakness but he lets him in. Craig steps over the threshold, closing the door behind him as John Paul perches himself on the arm of the sofa. He sits, arms crossed, eyes downcast as their uncomfortable silence grows in the otherwise quiet house.

“It was nice catching up with your mum.”

John Paul sorts. “Yeah, right.”

“Well, she told me you’ve been teaching sixth form. That’s...fantastic.” John Paul refuses to look up to see his chuffed smile.  The conversation is exhausting and it’s barely even started.  He stands up, grabbing the glass tumbler from the table and downing its contents. “She told me you got married. To Ste Hay of all people."  Craig laughs, bewildered.

“Yeah, I did.  You got a problem with that?” John Paul snaps. “You jealous?”

“What?” He blanches. “No, no, I...I’m just surprised, is all. I didn’t even know Ste was gay.”

“Well, not gay enough to keep him out of his best friend’s, his best _girl_ friend’s, mind, pants and knocking her up.” John Paul pours himself a refill, watching the liquor fill the cup. “I mean, surely since Myra seems to keen on divulging all the secrets of my love life to you, she must have told you that. And that we’re getting a divorce, of course.”

“She didn’t.”

“Yep. Less than a year of wedded bliss for me and Ste. He left me for one of my students in the end. Even after I’d stuck by him through his drug problem, rehab.  Because he _is_ gay enough to cheat on me with some random bloke and contract HIV.”

John Paul turns to see Craig’s panicked reaction at that bombshell. “I’m clean, if you care.”

“Of course I…” He blusters but John Paul cuts him off.

“Did she tell you about how I had an affair with a married man who ended up being Ste’s real father? Or how about the affair with my cousin’s husband, she fill you in on that?”

“No, she didn’t.” Craig says tersely, his jaw tight with agitation.

“How about prison? She tell you about prison?”

John Paul fills his mouth with another wash of liquid courage before continuing.

“Oh yeah,” JP nods at Craig’s confused look. “6 months. Wrongly accused of sexually harassing a student. Truth was, the only reason I was sent down was because I was too ashamed, too afraid really, to admit on the stand that the kid who was accusing me had actually raped me and was just manipulating me to keep me quiet.”

“Jesus, John Paul.” Craig breathes.

He’d watched the color drain from Craig’s face as he ranted, almost enjoying it. Let Craig feel disgusted by what he’d done, overwhelmed by what had happened to him, let him feel like it was all his fault John Paul’s life had gone to shit since he left Dublin. What did he care?

Craig takes an uneasy step forward before he reconsiders. “If I’d known, John Paul. If I’d known even one thing…”

“Yeah, but you didn’t, did you!” John Paul lashes out, his chest full of heat and ire. “Not one call, Craig. Not once is all these years.”

“I know and I’m sorry,” Craig winces. “But I told you, ever since New Years, I’ve been thinking about how long it’s been...about you.”

“Yeah, well don’t bother.” John Paul stands brusquely, but then from upstairs, the sleepy, distressed call of “Daddy,” shifts John Paul’s focus immediately elsewhere.

“Is that…?” Craig asks, a look of longing following the sound upstairs.

“Matthew,” John Paul says succinctly. “Remember him? The son I’ve been raising on my own? The one you didn’t want?”

“John Paul, please,” Craig begs, reaching for him.

“Don’t.” He feels ill as he flinches away from Craig’s touch. It’s too much. Too much scotch and too many memories and it leaves his insides a heaving mess. “Just go, Craig. There isn’t room for you in my life anymore.”

His throat tightens as Matthew’s voice calls for him again. He sways on his feet.

“And there sure as hell isn’t room for you in his.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh. Kind of a mess.

**January 8th, 2016. 2:42pm**

John Paul finds some happiness in an unseasonably pleasant afternoon with the prospect of no grading to do that night, his son singing an unidentifiable tune while he pushes him in the pram through the square on his way to treat himself to an afternoon latte.

Aside from nursing a raging hangover the previous morning as he attempted a lecture on Chaucer, the previous 24 hours have been relatively drama free. And by drama free, he means Craig Dean free. There had been no further visits by ex’s of ages past.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of ex’s of ages present.

They come out of the coffee shop, a happy foursome. Ste, Harry, Leah and Lucas. Ste’s grinning at Harry like he’s ready to light the world on fire, his hands gently leading the kids down the steps as Leah zips her coat high around her round face. Harry looks back at him, his body young, his laughter warm and contented.

“Daddy, I see Ste! Ste!” Matthew’s voice is bubbly and excited, and the sound carries.

Ste looks up, knowing John Paul must be close by and his eyes soften when he finds him, a cautious smile warming his face.

“Hiya,” he says, stuffing Lucas’s hat on his head as John Paul parks the pram at the foot of the stairs.

Matthew is out instantly, running straight to Ste’s arms and giving him a breezy, carefree greeting. Matthew chatters away. He’s been so unaffected by Ste’s absence these past few months. Blissfully unaware that this absence is meant to continue, permanently. John Paul envies him his quick ability to adjust. To hold no grudges.

“Daddy said I could have a sweet for being so good at the doctor’s today.”

“Doctor?” Ste asks with genuine concern.

“Just a check up,” John Paul says. “Didn’t cry, even once, for his shots.”

“Good man,” Ste says, hiking Matthew’s ever elongating body higher up on his hip. The movement brings him even close to John Paul. Close enough that he could easily slip his arm around Ste’s waist. Close enough that he remembers how that feels.

It could have been this. A happy threesome. If not for the other man standing by, his eyes flitting between his teacher and his boyfriend.

It had been John Paul’s choice, in the end, to send Ste into Harry’s arms. Hadn’t it?

For all his youth, Harry is smart enough to read the situation and give Ste and John Paul some times alone. “Let’s get you two to the park,” he says to Lucas and Leah. “Run off some of that sugar you just ate.”

Ste thanks him with a look and Leah cuddles next to John Paul’s legs, just a second longer, long enough for him to reach down and brush his fingers through the curls of hair beneath her beanie, before she’s off leaving the three of them alone.

“So, everything’s all good then, is it?” John Paul asks.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s different,” Ste says, watching them leave with a fondness that makes John Paul happy, just as much as it makes him ache. “But it’s good.”

“I’m glad for you,” John Paul says and Ste gives him a look. “I mean that.”

That statement sounds oddly familiar.

Ste plants Matthew back on the ground. “I should...catch up,” he motions awkwardly.

“Course.”

“But you,” he says turning back before going, “You’re alright? Aren’t you?”

That question sounds familiar, too. John Paul tucks a stray hair back behind Matthew’s ear and he wonders if is truly is all he’s ever destined to be as he answers, “I’m fine.”

*

**January 9, 2016. 07:42am**

Matthew had woken up having had an accident overnight. It hadn’t happened in months, so the wet sheets left tears of shame that had needed delicate, early morning tending while John Paul had been making his breakfast.

Which meant he’d burnt the toast and over steeped his tea.

After which, as he brought Matthew’s bedding downstairs to put them in the washer, he realized a load of laundry with the shirt he’d planned on wearing to work had been left in the machine overnight, sopping wet, which left them smelling of mold and in need of a rewash. So he’d had to rush upstairs to change, leaving him almost no time to make Matthew’s lunch to take with him to nursery, let alone his own breakfast for a 2nd time.

Not even, 8am and John Paul’s day is already shit.

Amidst the frantic chaos, the sound of the doorbell doesn’t faze him, so he opens the door, not thinking about who might be behind it, with a shout at Matthew up the stairs to, for the third time, please get dressed.

“Morning.”

John Paul’s chin falls to his chest as he laughs, breathlessly, at the ridiculous irony.

Craig. Of course. The universe seems really hell bent on kicking him while he’s down.

“Do you still take it black with two sugars?” Craig asks as the sweet smell of Earl Gray drifts out of a temptingly large white to-go cup. John Paul looks at him with weary eyes and a lithe smile curls on Craig’s lips.

It’s a bit flirty because he just can’t help himself. Or maybe John Paul just sees it that way, because he can’t help himself. Either way, it’s infuriating.

“I seriously haven’t got time for whatever game this is you think you’re playing. My morning is a complete mess and you are the last thing I need to be dealing with,” John Paul says, abandoning Craig in the doorway. He goes to the kitchen and begins cramming whatever food he can find into Matthew’s lunch sack. An apple, a packet cheese crackers and a granola bar are going to have to do for today.

“I’m not playing any games, John Paul.” Craig closes the door behind him, placing the steaming cup of tea close to John Paul’s hand. “I was just thinking we should talk.”

“What about?”

“How about everything that’s happened in the past four years? And more than just the Cliff’s Notes version?” Craig smiles to himself, than sobers. “It’s was a lot to take in, what you told me the other night.”

“Yeah, well, it was a lot to live through too.”

“I can only imagine.”

John Paul looks up at that statement. He glances at the tea, the proximity of Craig’s body and laughs. Something high pitched, stressed out and ridiculous.

“Tea and sympathy. That your MO this time around?”

“What?” Craig barely flinches.

“I do not understand why you are here,” Jon Paul enunciates slowly, as if talking to someone unfamiliar with the English language.

“I told you. I want to make things right between us. New year, new start, all that.”

John Paul rolls his eyes.

“You’re about 4 years too late for that, mate. Matthew!” John Paul yells, up the stairs and directly into Craig’s face. “It’s time to go!” Then in a near growl, “You need to leave. Now.”

“No,” Craig whispers harshly, his palm suddenly an immovable force in the center of John Paul’s chest. He looks down at it, the way Craig’s fingers spread over his pounding heart. “I didn’t come all this way leave things like this.”

John Paul remembers that Christmas. Watching the bus drive away as he chased after it. He remembers arriving in Hollyoaks, feeling like a failure. He remembers seeing Matthew for the first time, watching his mother swoon over this miracle child. And even though he’d no way of knowing, being sure this child was his.

He remembers being so overwhelmed at the prospect of raising this boy on his own that he almost didn’t have time to grieve the ending of the only relationship that had ever really mattered.

He remembers the feelings of abandonment. Crushing loneliness in the dark of sleepless nights, crying right along with baby Matthew. He thinks of the hatred that was easier to assign than regret. Placing blame instead of admitting any responsibility.

Had convincing Craig to have a baby together been a good idea? Probably not. But he’d been desperate and now, even for all the frantic mornings and long nights, he wouldn’t change it for the world.

John Paul finally finds the wherewithal to push Craig’s hand away. “What other way is there, Craig?” He says with labored resignation. “Please leave. I need to get Matthew to school,” He quickly grabs Matthew’s lunch from the counter and pushes past Craig. “Matthew, shoes. Now!” He shouts up the stairs again.

“You’ve been through a lot, I get that.” He can hear Craig follow behind as he stuffs folders and tests into his bag. “But so have I. All I want is just to talk, to...to hash things out, explain…”

“Explain what, Craig?” John Paul squares his shoulders, hands on his hips. “You left. Ran off on that bus to God knows where at Christmas, leaving me alone, Chloe 9 months pregnant. I hear nothing from you, for 4 years, and then you show up on my doorstep, clear out of nothing and what...expect some grand reunion? You want me to welcome you back in my life? Into Matthew’s?”

That is when John Paul feels Matthew at his hip, his small hands, curling around his thigh.

“I can’t find my other shoe.” Matthew’s voice is timid, as if intuiting the complexity of the moment.

John Paul finds himself breathless as he looks between the pair of them. The way Matthew looks up at Craig long and cautious, gazing at him with John Pauls’ eyes through his dark lashes. The way Craig seems to be gravitating towards Matthew without even realizing it, his breath shallow in his chest, his expression melting to pure wonder.

But John Paul is all panic. Protective possession over this little life that has been his responsibility and his alone. How much had Matthew heard of his little rant? Sure it had felt good to finally have the chance to go off on Craig but at what cost? Matthew’s a bright kid. Even hearing a snippet of that conversation might be enough for him to piece two and two together. And John Paul is not ready for that conversation.

“Who is that man, daddy?” Matthew asks and John Paul drops to his knees in front of him, maneuvering so he breaks their eye contact. He cups Matthew’s shoulders and his eyes, still a little red from the tears that morning, shift to his father’s.

“No one, sweetheart,” John Paul says, not unaware of the coldness in his voice. “He’s just someone daddy used to know. Come on, let’s go find your shoe, eh?”

John Paul stands, his hand on Matthew back to guide him towards the stairs. But he takes one last glance over his shoulder to catch the look of complete and utter betrayal that crumples across Craig’s face.


	5. Chapter 5

**January 9, 2016 11:36am**

“One for the road, then, eh?” Darren says as he slides a heady pint glass in front of Craig.

He clicks off his phone, the screen going black on his rescheduled itinerary for that evening. He’ll be back in Dublin by midnight.

“Yeah, ta,” Craig says, somber. Frankie watches out of the corner of her eye as she counts the money in the till, prepping for the pub to open in time for lunch. She looks at him with that maternal sympathy that is two parts comforting, one part patronizing.

He’d been prepared for this kind of reaction from John Paul, at least in theory. But having the bitter truth of too little, far, far too late flung in his face not once but twice is hitting harder than he’d expected.

Craig has never been good at rejection, only at doling it out. It’s a defense mechanism, or so his therapist says.

“I’m really sorry, mate. I know you were hoping for...well, not this.”

“Somethings are too old and broken to fix. And John Paul and I,” Craig blows a puff of air out between his lips. “I’m not sure we were ever put together properly.”

He shrugs then takes a sip of his lager, then places it on the bar, lining his thumbs up on either side of the glass.

His eyes narrow and watches the bubbles as he thinks. “Maybe if I’d known... If it hadn’t all been such a shock. Prison? Raped?” The word nearly chokes him. “Why didn’t you ever tell me, especially considering Nance was involved?” Darren shrugs, looking to Frankie. “I felt like such a twat being so completely oblivious.”

Frankie is the one to answer, her voice a calming sound against his rising nerves as she comes to stand next to Darren behind the bar.

“We never told you about what was happening with John Paul for the same reasons we never told him about what’s been going on in your life: you’d both moved on.”

And he had, for a time.

“Yeah, if we’d told you about John Paul, would you have left Dublin? Come back here to be by John Paul’s side and packed in your life with…”

“Alright, I get it your point,” says Craig, quickly cutting Darren off before he says something that doesn’t need repeating. Unbidden, his fingers slip to his left temple, to the inch long scar hidden just on his hairline. The smooth line of skin is still sensitive, healed but not cured, not completely. He’s not sure it ever will be.

“Sorry, I’m an idiot,” Darren mumbles before wandering into the back for more glasses.

Frankie steps in front of him, prying his hand away his head. It’s a nervous tick she’s noticed, both when she’d been with him in Ireland and the days he’s been here, and it breaks her heart. She presses both of his hands in hers, takes a deep, resolved, breath.

“If nothing else, I’ve had you back home for a few days. I’ve liked that, you know.” She smiles carefully but Craig returns the look warmly.

“Should I even bother to tell him I’m leaving? _Again?_ ”

Frankie nods. “And this time, sweetheart, give yourself what the two of have never really had.” Craig’s brow furrows and she squeezes his hands all the tighter. “A proper goodbye.”

*  
 **January 9, 3:04pm**

The Craig John Paul knew, from when he’d first met him in high school until they were living together in Dublin, had one epic ego on him. Brazen and cocksure, almost to the point of ego-maniacal. He didn’t take no for an answer and always seemed to be able to weasel his way into getting what he wanted from anyone, often with no thought for others.

It wasn’t a character trait to be proud of or one that John Paul found endearing. It was just something he’d learned to live with for the sake of the parts of Craig he truly had loved.

But this? This is a level of arrogant single-mindedness that managed to shock even him.

Craig is waiting for him outside work, his eyes narrow against the pale winter sun, his chin tucked down into the collar of his coat, looking so very much older than the last time John Paul saw him in this school yard.

Craig hasn’t noticed him yet, so he gives himself this moment to just...look.

It’s the first time since Craig’s bizarre return that John Paul does that. Just looks with a thoughtful eye at the boy, now man, who’d held his heart tenaciously for so long.

There are the obvious differences. His clothes are nicer, modern and trim, fitting his narrow frame in a way that is both mature and flattering. His hair is different, longer, tucked back and away carefully over his left ear. It suits him. But there is an ease to the way he stands that seems different, too. A lack of the tension that had always seemed to pull his jaw tight, curl his hands into fists. His body seems slower now, as if he’s finally grown into it and into himself.

It is strange to know someone so well - to know every quirky tilt of his head, to remember what he looks like eating toast in his skivvies on a Sunday morning, the sound he make after that first bite of a great meal, the exact touch of his hands in the middle of the night, reaching out, wanting - but feel like he doesn’t know them at all.

Maybe that is why John Paul has reacted so poorly to his showing up again. It’s only made him realize how much Craig had once meant and how deep the wounds, now scarred over and forgotten, replaced by fresher, more immediate pains, had run.

Some students jostle past him, laughing and Craig sees him, finally. With a deep sigh, his breath coming out in a long white puff of air, he walks across the school yard towards John Paul.  
  
By the time Craig reaches him, John Paul is ready with some quip about Craig being a stalker, but before he can speak Craig puts his hands up and says, “I’m not here to have another go like this morning.” John Paul notices a familiar backpack on his shoulders. “I just wanted to let you know I’m heading back to Dublin tonight.”

“Finally got the hint did you?” That nastiness is easier to take than the twinge of disappointment in his chest.

Craig laughs sadly. “Right. Well, for what it’s worth, I wanted to say goodbye. And that I’m sorry.”

“You’ve said that plenty already.”

“Yeah, because I mean it. I’m sorry for everything, John Paul. I’m sorry for leaving like I did. I’m sorry that I’ve been completely MIA for so long. I’m sorry for what you’ve gone through. But mostly I’m sorry I let things go this long between us. It should never have happened and that’s all on me.”

Just then, Harry comes out of the school behind John Paul, football kit thrown over one shoulder, school bag the other. Their eyes catch, awkwardly for a moment, before Harry follows John Paul’s gaze, giving the unknown man a quizzical look.

But Craig goes on, unaware. “You asked me this morning why I came here and I guess I’m not totally sure. I kind of assumed you wouldn’t be very happy,” the corner of his mouth curls gently up and John Paul bites at his so they don’t follow suit. “I didn’t expect us to be best mates again or anything. But one chat, one proper conversation between two people who, even if they don’t any more, used to care a hell of a lot about each other…” His hands come up then fall back to his sides. “Well, that would have been nice.”

And just as John Paul had given himself the chance to finally really look, he gives himself the same opportunity to really listen. Craig sounds sincere. Looks it too. But there is that part of John Paul, the cautious part that is feeling the ache of those remembered slights, that reminds that rest of him just how easy it was for Craig to make someone believe exactly what he wanted. _It’ll always be me and you. I love you, John Paul McQueen.  There is nothing going on with her and me. Of course I can’t wait to be a dad with you._

Craig hooks his thumbs in his backpack straps. “Be well, John Paul. Be happy. And if I ever do cross your mind, give me a call. I’ll be happy to have that chat with you.”

There is a tenuous moment where Craig could have stepped forward. Where he could have closed the space between them and wrapped his arms around John Paul in farewell. It would have been appropriate, considering the situation and John Paul finds himself almost anticipating it, strangely enough. But instead, with a sturdy nod, Craig turns to go.

John Paul tastes the word on his tongue before he says it. Lets his mind, synapses firing a million times in a fraction of a second, trace the possible outcomes that might occur if he says the word.

His palms tingle as he takes a step forward and his stomach flutters.

“Wait.”


	6. Chapter 6

**January 9, 2016. 3:57pm**

Craig’s feet stop, pivot.

“What time’s your flight?”

“Few hours,” Craig says with a shrug.

He watches the hesitation play across John Paul’s face morph into resolution. “I have to pick up Matthew but...there’s a park near by. We could go and talk while he plays.”

The relief is so overwhelming he can barely speak. “I’d,” he stutters. “That’d be, yeah, great.”

“But not one word to him about who you were,” John Paul says, taking a daunting step forward. “Do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal.”

Some forty minutes later, Craig finds himself sat on a park bench, surrounded by shrieking children, his fingers going numb in his gloves.

It’s not nearly as bad as he thought it would be.

Nevetherless, he cups his hands and blows.

“Cold?” John Paul asks, speaking his first words since he’d knelt down next to his son outside his school.

_“Do you remember this man?” He’d asked._

_Matthew had nodded, looking at Craig again with those haunting, thoughtful eyes. “From this morning.”_

_“That’s right. This is Mr. Craig. He’s going to come to the park with us and sit with daddy while you play. Is that alright?” Matthew had nodded again, as he’d smiled, thoughts already on the playground._

“It is January. So, yeah,” Crais says. John Paul almost laughs.

“Doesn’t matter what time of year it is. He’s gotta work all that extra energy out somehow,” John Paul says with a tired smile. “If I could bottle his energy, no one would need coffee anymore and I’d be a millionaire.”

They fall into silence, watching Matthew careen down a slide, laughing as another child pops out right behind him. It makes Craig smile.

“He’s a handsome devil, isn’t he?”

This time John Paul’s smile is warm, proud and loving. It’s a beautiful sight to behold.

“Yeah, he is. He's got a little girlfriend at school,” John Paul says. “Always following him around, wanting his attention. He eats it up. He's got that McQueen charm already.”

They share a small laugh. Talking about him makes it easy. Talking about this pure, young child with a future as bright as his smile. It’s much easier than talking about what they’ve both been through since his short life began. Much easier than addressing the reasons he’s being raised by a single dad.

And even though it’s nice and lovely and completely endearing to listen to John Paul talk about his son, this isn’t why Craig came back. The time for ignoring the consequences of their past is long gone. And if he has any hope of leaving Hollyoaks as more than a bitter enemy to John Paul, or even worse, a stranger, those uncomfortable, ugly things need to be talked about too.

Craig starts them down that path as gently as he can.

“You know, when Chloe got pregnant and we decided to not find out who the dad was, I’d always secretly hoped he would be yours.”

At the mention of their shared past, John Paul’s back goes straight, his lips purse and he is snapped right back into that defensive, angry mode he’s been in since the day Craig came back here.

“Why, to sooth your guilt when you up and abandoned him before he was even born?”

“So he could have your eyes,” He says, calmly, not rising to the bait. “Your smile, your smarts, your better nature. I’m glad to see he does.” John Paul barely reacts to the soft praise, just looks to Craig briefly before returning his eyes to watch his son.

“Why did you never tell him about me? About us?”

John Paul shoots him a scorned look. “And say what, exactly? ‘Oh hey Matthew, let me tell you about this man named Craig who broke Daddy’s heart again and again. Who should have been by your side all along, only he didn’t really ever want to do.’”

“Don’t,” Craig bites, pinching his thumb and forefinger across his eyes. “Don’t say that, please.”

“Why not? It’s the truth.”

“I wanted him just as much as you did,” Craig says and John Paul laughs, derisively. “Look, I’m not proud of it but I’m sure I’m not the first dad-to-be to have second thoughts.”

John Paul slumps over to the far side of the bench, pulling his scarf tighter around his neck.

“Christ, John Paul,” Craig continues in an intense whisper. “We were so young. What were thinking, really, wanting a baby? We barely had any money and no family to help. And it wasn’t even legal for us to get married in Ireland then.”

John Paul flinches at the mention of the “M” word. Just because he and John Paul had never talked about going through with it, doesn’t mean Craig had never thought about it. Or how the fact they weren’t allowed to marry might limit their options with a child.

“What kind of life could we really have given him, then?”

  
“A pretty damn good one, I think. With two parents who loved him,” John Paul snaps with well deserved defensiveness.

“Two parents who couldn’t even love each other, trust each other, properly? Was that really the place for a kid? Things hadn’t been good for us, not for a while, you know that as well as I do and having a baby wasn’t going to fix it.”

That statement settles John Paul’s hackles back down into place as the real heart of the matter is finally exposed.

This is the start of the conversation they should have been had ages and ages ago. Long before Craig had run away on that bus. Before they had started buying onesies and looking through name books at night instead of making love. Before John Paul had found himself so insecure about how Craig felt that he’d thought a baby was the only way.

But instead they seem destined to have that conversation now, here, four years on as the child in question climbs a ladder to the highest platform, a look of pride and fierce determination on his face.

“But once the decision had been made, we should have stuck with it,” John Paul says, turning his body to face Craig. His voice is commanding, if not a bit sad. “We owed it to him to at least have tried.”

“Maybe you’re right. And I know I bolted. I take full responsibility of that,” Craig says. “But I didn’t leave because I didn’t want to be his dad. I just wasn’t ready to be. No then at least.”

The color drains from John Paul’s face as he turns to face Craig.

“Oh god,” he says, hand coming to his mouth. “That why you’re here. Why you’re _really_ here, is it? Why you came back? You’re going to try and take him from me aren’t you?”

*  
 **January 9, 2016. 4:12pm**

John Paul is immediately up, pacing. His fingers skitter through his hair as his chest begins to rise and fall erratically. “Oh god, I thought I was through with this when Chloe signed her rights away, but now…I never thought that you’d want him. I mean, Frankie did talk to me before Christmas, asking about him. Is this her? Does she want him?”

Now, Craig’s had his fair share of experience with panic attacks recently, so he can see one as it’s coming. Immediately he stands, moving his face in close to John Paul’s trying to get his attention. He places his hands on John Paul’s shoulders, letting them be a sturdy foundation for him to lock onto.

“ And, shit, I told you about prison, and all my affairs... oh god the courts will completely side with you.”

“John Paul, listen.  Listen to me.  I’d never try and take Matthew away not in a million years.”

But John Paul just keeps stammering on, his tirade becoming more erratic with talk of lawyers and hiring some heavy named Trevor. His face breaks out in a sweat even in the cold air.

“John Paul, sit down for me. Sit. Take a deep breath.”

He manages to get John Paul to sit back down.  He presses his palm between his shoulder blades, encouraging his head between his knees.  Craig is so focused on helping John Paul that neither man hear Matthew’s brave, “Daddy, look at me!”

And neither of them see him attempt to grab onto a monkey bar, just out of his reach and several meters off the ground.

Neither man see him fall, head first towards the ground.

They only both look up when another parent screams, looking just in time to see him land, motionless on the ground.

There is a flurry of terror. All John Paul’s breathless panic is now completely redirected, focused on the fall.

The twenty paces between the bench and the playground are crossed in an instant. He falls to his knees, calling his Matthew’s name. There is a small trickle of blood over his closed eyes but the puffy coat, the one John Paul had so carefully zipped up at school not an hour before, rises and falls slowly.

Unconscious but not...

John Paul’s chest heaves, gasping with relief.

“Matthew, sweetheart,” He says, reaching out for him.

“Don’t touch him,” He hears Craig say gently, cell phone at his ear, having already dialed 999. “If he has a head or neck injury you should wait for the EMTs.” Then into the phone. “Yes, a child has fallen off the playground equipment at the Hollyoaks park. That’s right. Yes, Matthew McQueen. He’s 4.”

John Paul rocks back, sobbing Matthew’s name again. His arms ache, wanting so much to pick him up. To feel the weight of him against his chest. To hold him close and make the owies go away.

Craig stays with him, crouched down next to him on the wood chips. When they finally hear the wail of the sirens, rising in pitch they approach, he feels Craig’s hand, strong and comforting on his back.

“It’s gonna be alright,” Craig says and John Paul has no choice but to believe him.


	7. Chapter 7

**January 9, 2016 5:02pm**

“I shouldn’t have been talking to you.”

John Paul stares up at the florescent lights of the hospital waiting room. They do nothing to hide the tear tracks on his face. The emotional whiplash of a once perceived and a once dangerously real threat at losing the one person, who at the end of the day, truly matters in his life in a miniscule amount of time has left him feeling hollow. A balloon completely deflated.

He has nothing left.

Only guilt.

“I was distracted. Freaking out for no reason... If I’d been keeping a better eye on him…”

“You still couldn’t have been there in time to catch him,” Craig says, patiently. He peers once more through the window into the hallway, hoping to see an approaching doctor. When he sees none, he resumes his seat next to John Paul. “It was an accident, yeah? Happens to kids all the time and he’s going to be fine. The EMTs said it looked far worse than it actually is, right?”

The surge of activity - the EMT’s arrival, the ride in the back of the ambulance where Matthew’s eyes had fluttered and his little fingers had flexed then clung to his, the rush of doctors and nurses and administration needing information and signatures - feels like a nebulous wash of emotions.

“Still,” John Paul swallows, thickly. “I should have been watching... After everything he went through when he was born, after everything I’ve put him through, I need to be better. Every day I try to be the best dad for him but...” The words catch in his throat.

“Hey, he knows that, John Paul.” Craig turns, empathetic and kind. John Paul doesn’t have enough energy left in him to question why Craig is still here. “He knows how much you love him. I can see the way he looks at you.”

“Yeah, and hows that?” He says after a loud sniff.

“Like he’s looking at the sun.”

It feels like Craig has a similar look in his eyes, just then. Snotty nose, raw, red eyes and all, Craig’s gaze lands on him with a gentleness that fills that exhausted void in his heart with something exhilarating and warm. He’s reminded of quiet Sunday mornings, the view from their window skewed by the Irish fog. Of the aftermath of secret hookups in John Paul’s twin bed, where wonder and love blocked out the uncertainty and lies.

How dare Craig look at him with such easy affection, now.

The door opens, saving John Paul from further study.

“Mr. McQueen?” Her voice is chipper, her scrubs covered in little cartoon dogs. “Matthew’s all patched up. You can come see him now.”

And maybe it’s how tired he is. Or maybe it’s because seeing that tender look on Craig’s face had touched a nerve. Or maybe it’s because, deep down, he’s unspeakably grateful to have him - regardless of their history - by his side through all this. But whatever the reason, John Paul doesn’t even think of it when Craig follows him into Matthew’s room.

*

**January 9, 2016. 5:17pm**

Usually, when John Paul checks on him before going to bed himself, he is always struck by how big and tall he looks, legs all splayed in his bed. But here, in the bright white lights, surrounded by silent machines, he looks small. Breakable but, thank god, not broken.

The nurse explains the injuries. Fracture to the elbow, already set in a sling, that thankfully won’t require surgery to heal. Heavy bruising to his ribs, but nothing more. The worst of it is a nasty gash above his ear that needed a few stitches and a thick bandage around his head to stop the bleeding.

“We need to keep him for a few hours to make sure the head injury doesn’t take a turn for the worse. We’ll do another concussion check before he leaves. But these little ones, they snap back from these sorts of things like little rubber bands. He’ll be over this before you are.”

She notices the uneasy way John Paul stands near the bed. “He’s just sleeping, wake him up if you like. I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you.”

With a broad smile to both of them she leaves.

John Paul moves towards the bed, brushing the side of his fingers over Matthew’s round cheek as he approaches. “Matthew,” He says softly. He stirs and his eyes, when they blink open, are instantly full of tears.

“Hey, little man, I’m here,” John Paul says, lowering himself to the chair near Matthew’s head that seems to miraculously appear behind him. Matthew looks past John Paul at the miracle worker himself, his fingers still curled over the back of the chair. “So is Mr. Craig.”

John Paul gives him a short nod of thanks as Craig slips back to the unobtrusive corners of the room.

“What were you thinking, eh?” John Paul asks Matthew with a watery grin. “You showing off for someone?”

“No, I was just trying...” Matthew shakes his head the best he can. “My head...it hurts.”

“I know sweetheart,” John Paul brushes the edge of the bandage, pushing some of Matthew’s soft curls away. Matthew lifts his good hand to do the same. When he fingers the bandage from one side of his head to the other the realization of the sheer size of the wrapping dawns on him, his dark eyes fill with panic.

“Will I have it forever?”

“No, love,” John Paul heart breaks a little even as he laughs. “It’s just for a little while. Just until you’re all better.”

“You know I had a pretty big bump on my head not so long ago too,” Craig says from the other side of the room.

He comes closer to the bed, slowly, cautiously, checking the whole way that his addition to the conversation is not an unwanted invasion.

“You did?” Matthew asks, still a bit weepy.

“Oh, yeah. Massive bang up, right here,” he points to the left side of his head. “Only mine was way bigger,” he says, as if it’s some sort of competition.  Matthew smiles. 

“Did it hurt?”

“Course, it did. But my doctors took care of me, just like your doctors are taking good care of you. And I wasn’t nearly as brave as you’re being.”

“Did you fall off a playground too?” Matthew asks, captivated, his pain almost forgotten.

But something flashes across Craig’s face. A twitch of a pained smile, the burden of memory filling his eyes. It’s not a look long or obvious enough for Matthew to notice. But it is obvious enough for John Paul.

It’s a look shrouded with such pain that is sets Craig back on his heels and John Paul forward in his chair.

But just as quickly as it had come, it is gone.

Craig’s mouth morphs back into something much more charming and he pats Matthew gently on his good arm. “Yeah, something like that.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's Hollyoaks world, people. Soapy soapiness ahead. 
> 
> Also, warnings for description of violence and the use of one homophobic slur. (Also in reference to past events.
> 
> 2 more chapters, I think!

**January 9, 2016. 7:32pm**

The lights in the hallway outside Matthew’s room are dimmed for nighttime, letting the hospital patients who will be spending the night have the darkness to sleep. Lucky for John Paul, that won’t be the case for his Matthew.

The doctors are in with him now for one last round of tests before he can be discharged. Besides pelting the nurses with questions about every little thing they did and making a multipoint defense for why he should be allowed to have ice cream for dinner, Matthew has been an ideal patient. Bouncing back quickly, just as promised.

John Paul looks to Craig, watching him in profile.

“How’d you really get that scar?” John Paul asks.

He barely reacts to the question, as if he’d been expecting John Paul to ask. Hoping.

Craig takes a deep breath through his nose and lets it out through his mouth. Someone taught him how to breath like that, slow and practiced. He rotates his shoulders against the hard plastic of the chair and speaks into the silence.

“After we split up, I got on with things. The holidays ended and it was back to work, back to reality. I had to tell all our friends that we broke up. I moved to a new flat, smaller, just around the corner because I couldn’t...I missed you, John Paul but I knew you weren’t coming back.”

He takes another breath with even more focus.

“After a while, I met someone. And fell for them. Hard. And I thought maybe this was it. This was me moving on from what we’d had.”

The jealously snaps around his heart, icy and unexpected. He remembers Chloe telling him about this new girl Craig had started seeing. While he was cleaning up nappies and spit, Craig had found a new girl to deceive. He’d only added it to his list of reasons to hate him.

John Paul knows he has no right, sitting here, technically a still married man to begrudge something so long gone. But listening to Craig talk about loving someone else, it still hurts.

“What was her name?” John Paul asks, feeling a bit ill.

“Peter.”

John Paul stares openly as Craig answers without missing a beat. “A bloke?”

“Don’t look so shocked. I am gay, John Paul,” Craig leans his head back against the wall, making this baffling statement as easily as someone else might have said that Elizabeth is the Queen of England.

“What do you mean, you’re gay?” John Paul asks, eyes narrowed, a bit snide in his disbelief.

Craig rocks his head to the side to look at John Paul. “I am romantically and sexualy attracted to men. Surely you remember that?” he says with a devilish twitch of his eyebrow. John Paul blushes. “I’ve also had romantic attachments to women so bisexual might be a more accurate label but I’m definitely not straight.”

It’s a clinical anwer, practiced just like the breathing. How many times must he have recited that for it to come so easily to him? To cause no distress? To simply be the truth?

“Well,” John Paul says, impressed. “Look at you.”

Craig smiles limply, before rolling his head back and returning his eyes skyward.

“He was from Northern Ireland. Came from a big Catholic family, all very conservative. If they’d known he was gay…well, he wouldn’t have had a family any more. He was out at work and with most his friends. So when it just the two of us, in our little bubble, it was fine. I didn’t mind keeping his secret.  But as soon as his parents came to visit or he went home for the holidays, I didn’t exist. It was a complete secret to them. Just a really good mate to their son. ”

John Paul tries so very hard, but he can’t help but snicker.

“Yeah, yeah,” Craig says as he hears his reaction. He’s smiling lightly. “I thought you might like the karmic retribution part of the story. Me, someone’s dirty little secret. What are the odds?”

John Paul motions innocently, pretending to lock his mouth and throw away the key. Craig rolls his eyes, snickering lightly, before his mood shifts, his eyes going dark.

“Things were fine the way they were, great even, until one afternoon his brother showed up. Wanted to surprise him with an early birthday present. Well, his brother’s an idiot but it didn’t take him long to put two and two together when we were both standing in the kitchen in nothing but our pants, with framed pictures of the two of us all over the flat. He kicked off. Threw every possible slur you could think of at the pair of us. When I tried to step in and explain, to defend us, Peter just sent me off, told me to go home and that he’d sort it. ”

Another breath and a thick swallow.

“Well, I guess by sorting it he meant that he’d come to mine a few hours later, with his brother and a cricket bat.”

“He didn’t...” John Paul gasps.

“He was raving drunk. Going off at me, telling his brother that I was nothing more than some faggot stalker from the office next door. That he’d tried again and again to get rid of me. That he hated me and was embarrassed to even know me. I tried to get past him but...one crack, here,” He points to his head again. “And that’s all I remember.”

This time the breath he takes is not so steady. It comes in and out of his lungs in stuttered pulses. His eyes are dark, unseeing the hospital around him but the replaying the brutal memories. Without hesitation, John Paul reaches for him, letting his palm land firmly between his shoulder blades.

“They kept me in a coma for four days to keep the brain swelling down. My collarbone was broken, five ribs, there was a laceration on my spleen so that’s gone now,” He tries to laugh, to make light of it. He looks to John Paul, hoping to see some levity there, but John Paul can only look at him with complete shock. And utter heartbreak.

“At the trial, his brother testified that he eventually had to pull him off me and that if he hadn’t...well, I wouldn’t have been sitting in that courtroom. Saved by your closeted boyfriend’s homophobic brother, now that’s something to wrap your head around, ain’t it?”

Craig doesn’t cry, even as John Paul feels himself choke up. He’s seen Craig cry over lesser things: getting outed, losing Sarah, loving him. And yet, here, in the face of this horrible act he remains neutral.

John Paul knows how that is. To feel so completely overwhelmed by the horror of something that you can only speak of it in stoic terms for fear of finding yourself so burdened by the memories that you fear you’ll never escape them.

“Something like this, such completely betrayal from someone you trusted, it changes you. How much must he have hated himself to do that to me? It still breaks my heart to think about.”

“He nearly killed you, Craig”

“I know. But he got sent down for GBH and then some. He’s never getting out; his life is over. But mine isn’t.  And I knew I couldn’t keep going the way I had. I couldn’t live my life by halves anymore, couldn’t keep hiding from who I really am, living in any sort of closet, someone else’s or my own. So I got some therapy, well, a lot of therapy. Started doing yoga.”

John Paul brows shoot up in surprise.

“I know, right?” Craig says with cute, knowing smile. “I even started volunteering for a charity that helps homeless LGBT youth.”

A warning alarm starts beeping in one of the rooms down the hall, and several nurses and an MD rush past them. Craig sits craining his head to watch them rush to action. For a moment they are distracted, thoughts with whomever is in that room, facing whatever crisis they are in the middle of.

“When did all this happen?” John Paul asks, turning back to Craig, still trying to wrap his head around all of it.

“Just about a year ago.”

“New year, new start, indeed.” John Paul says, suddenly understanding Craig’s refrain. Craig nods.

“It took me a long time to find any sort of silver lining in all this.”

“How could you possible do that?”

“Mum and I are closer than we’ve been, maybe ever. She really accepts me for who I am, now. My mates in Dublin have been amazing. And it gave me the time and the perspective to really take stock of my life. To recognize the things and people that are important. To see how good I had it and could still have if only I hadn’t taken it all for granted.” He looks to John Paul, eyes sad enough to make him fully aware he's talking about them. “I must have picked up the phone a thousand times to call you. Just to check in, to tell you what had happened. To hear your voice,” he whispers.

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because, John Paul,” he says with a sad lilt to his head. “You’ve always deserved better than me.”

For the first time since the unraveling of this story began, a tremor of emotion upsets the steady sound of Craig’s voice.

“Or at least, a better version of me. And I can see that now. So what could I have given you, then, eh? Just more of the same. Worse. A fucked up, head case, work in progress. But when I called you on New Year’s Eve, it wasn’t a drunk dial. It wasn’t some Freudian slip. I think it was my subconscious telling me I was ready.”

“For what, exactly?” John Paul asks, breathless.

He can feel as much as see the way Craig’s eyes fall to John Paul’s lips. Sense the way Craig is breathing, mouth parted and shallow.

“Well, I think that’s for you to decide.”

And that is the moment - the moment where John Paul’s cheeks are flushed, his heart bumping against his ribs, his mind swirling with the question of _How the hell did we get from me calling him ‘just someone he used to know’ to this over the course of one day?_ The moment where he feels such want, such closeness, such inevitable anticipation - that the door to Matthew’s room and opens and the nurse with the cheerful smile and the flashy scrubs tells him that Matthew is all checked and they can go home.


	9. Chapter 9

**January 9, 2016. 9:28pm**

The McQueen house is quiet. All the various characters that make up his hodge-podge family are either sequestered in their rooms for the night or staying elsewhere.

Matthew had fallen asleep in the back of the taxi on the way home from the hospital. After getting ice cream for dinner, of course. But even though he’d barely even stirred as John Paul had carried him up the stairs, even though the doctors assured him that everything was going to be just fine, John Paul still curls up next to him on his bed and holds him, just for a little while. Just to be sure.

And honestly, just to give himself a moment to prepare for what he knows is waiting for him downstairs. There is no way to deny what had almost happened between him and Craig. No use pretending he hadn’t wanted it to happen.

Unable to put off the inevitable any longer, John Paul slips out of the warmth of Matthew’s bed, closes the door silently behind him and sneaks down the stairs.

The only lights left on are in the kitchen. That is where he finds Craig, back turned, cleaning up the dishes that were left in the sink. There are two freshly brewed cups of tea steaming next to him and a bottle of whisky out just in case.

It’s a scene that is so domestic and so familiar is makes his stomach flutter.

Craig turns, a smile on his face and that’s when it hits him.

“You’ve missed your flight haven’t you?”

“It’s alright,” Craig says. He sounds a bit tired. “Wasn’t terribly keen on getting back, anyway. And I’m glad I could be here for...You know.”

“Yeah, me too,” John Paul says. Craig hands John Paul the tea and they settle into a comfortable silence.

“So what happened with you and Ste?”

John Paul takes a sip. It’s strange thinking of Ste now, with Craig next to him, his hips resting against the edge of the countertop only a few inches away from his. He’s spent so much time over the past few days, rehashing the broken heart Craig had left him with that he’d had almost no time to really grieve the marriage that he’d just walked away from.

Maybe, then, his relationship with Ste doesn’t need mourning. Perhaps it was just the prospect of being alone rather than actually losing Ste that had left him down in the dumps on New Year’s Eve. Their relationship had been been over ages ago, really, and still they had continued to support each other and be there when they needed each other.

“I think, in the end, we’re just better off as mates.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” John Paul says, satisfied with how true that feels.

“So it’s, you know, definitely over?”

“I mean, we haven’t signed any paperwork but he’s with Harry now and I’m…” Craig waits. John Paul chooses his words carefully. “I’m ok with that.”

Craig looks down to the dregs of his tea, kicking his feet out further in front of him and crossing them at the ankles. “We could never have been ‘just mates’.”

“What?”

“I mean, not once I knew how you felt. Not once I kissed you.”

John Paul realizes he’s talking about school. About Hannah’s birthday, the dance. Ancient history but their history.

“I remember walking through that front door.” Craig lifts a finger off the mug and points, then sets the empty cup down out of the way. “I’d left my exam ‘cause I was such a mess. My head, completely done in. God, I was terrified,” he adds.

“Of what?”

“Wanting you. Needing you. Thinking I was too late and that you’d moved on with Spike.”

“Good old Spike,” John Paul laughs thinking of the first man he ever slept with. The buffer of time and the folly of his youth lets him think of this momentous moment in his relationship with Craig with nostalgia, rose colored yet crystal clear. “You were jealous.”

“I _was_ jealous,” Craig agrees. “As much as couldn’t understand it andI would never have admitted it at the time.”

Craig moves to stand in front of John Paul. “I asked for a drink. Then I stood right here and you told me you still loved me. And I knew...I had to act. I had to kiss you.” Craig steps in close. His voice drops to a private whisper. “Then I reached for you and you didn’t pull away.”

Craig’s hand slides over John Pauls waist.

“You were trembling,” John Paul says, watching the way Craig’s fingers graze his shirt.

Craig nods, his eyes surveying the length and breadth John Paul’s face, from hairline to cheek bone, in a gentle fashion.

“Crying,” he says, close enough now that John Paul can nearly feel his pulse racing through his veins. John Paul can hardly breath. Hardly speak.

He tilts his head, closes his eyes.

“You tasted like sherry.”

Craig covers his mouth with his.

And this time he tastes like warm Earl Gray tea.

*

**January 9, 2016. 9:41pm**

It’s nothing like he remembers. Or maybe it’s just that he’s forgotten.

So many other lips have touched his since Craig’s last did - Doug. Danny. Ste. Lockie. God, even Harry - so of course any recollection of a kiss like this from Craig could be faulty.

But as Craig moves in, his body graceful and sure as it presses John Paul firmly back against the counter, he realizes it isn’t his memory that has changed, but the person himself.

Craig kisses like a man and not a boy. He kisses like someone comfortable in his own skin instead of someone burdened with shame. It is exhilarating and confusing and such a fucking turn on.

Craig steals his lips away from John Paul’s mouth, planting them on the hallow by the by his ear, remembering just how insane that makes him. But with John Paul head fall into the cradled in Craig’s hand, his own hands clenched, white knuckled in Craig’s shirt, he can’t really be bothered with the whys and wherefores.

He wants all of it. More kissing, and not just on his lips. More fingertips brushing his skin and not just on his neck and jaw. And from the rough, ragged breathes Craig is taking through his nose, he’s pretty sure Craig does too.

“Do you,” John Paul pants. “Want to go up stairs?”

Craig’s eyes are electric. He licks his lips and agrees.

Without it needing to be said, they tiptoe past Myra, Matthew and Cleo’s rooms. When John Paul closes the door behind them, Craig is on him again, capturing his lips with a near silent growl.

Instead of the moans, cries and filthy words John Paul wishes he could fill his room with, they express their mounting arousal through their eyes, wide open and watchful as buttons are undone and clothing removed. Through tiny breathes, held than let out in a warm rush against skin. Through the slipping, grasping fingers on flesh. Open mouthed kisses, hot and bold.   
John Paul finds himself standing near the foot of his bed, hard, wanting so desperately to feel the weight of Craig’s body on his, to spread himself wide open, hold nothing back.

So with no ceremony, he pulls away from Craig, undoes his belt and fly, and drops his trousers to the floor. Craig exhales audibly at the sight of him. The color rushes high onto his cheeks and his eyes flutter. It feels like forever since someone has looked at him like that.

“Your turn,” John Paul whispers, maneuvering his naked body in a seductive twist, spinning both himself and Craig around so his knees his the back of the bed. He drops to the edge, bringing himself eye level with Craig’s erection, pressed against the inside of his denims. John Paul brushes his knuckles against it and Craig throws his head back. He undoes the button on Craig’s fly.

“Wait,” Craig’s voice is tight.

“What is it?”

Craig wipes uncomfortably at his brow. “It’s just it’s...been a while.”

“I’m not expecting you to last all night. God, I’m halfway gone myself…” John Paul says, fingers working the zipper down.

“Stop.”

John Paul flinches as Craig grabs his wrist, harder than he expects. All John Paul can think is, _Here we go again_.

But then Craig lets go, his hands coming up in a pacifying gesture.

“It’s not just that it’s been a long time,” Craig says, looking up at the ceiling. “It just hasn’t been since…”

 _Oh god_ , John Paul puts it all together. “Since Peter.”

The sound of the name makes Craig’s jaw clench. He nods tersely.

John Paul’s hands fall to his lap and he suddenly feels like a complete twat, sitting there in the buff, his hard on showing no sympathy to Craig’s delicate emotions. But John Paul knows all too well the fear of being intimate again after a vicious attack. How afraid you are to open yourself up to someone. He remembers, with a fleeting sense of gratitude, how patient Ste had been with him their first time, how careful.

“Look,” John Paul says, standing up. “We don’t have to do this.”

“But I want to,” Craig says, reaching for him. “God, I really want to.”

He kisses John Paul, who lets his hands flutter gently to Craig’s bare shoulders. Craig wraps his arms around John Paul’s waist and for a moment, they simply hold each other, feeling the warmth of their skin together.

He whispers into John Paul’s neck. “I don’t trust doing this again with anyone but you.”

John Paul nearly weeps.

Gone is all the heartache. The remembered fights. The times when Craig let him down or John Paul over-reacted. Instead, flooding into his mind and his heart and his working fingers is every good moment. The laughing. The comfort. The support and the love.

They hadn’t always been a mess. Tumultuous. Passionate. Dramatic. Yes, of course. But they had also been amazing. And John Paul had loved him with the very fiber of his being. And for as much as he’d wanted to forget when things ended, Craig had loved him just as fiercely.

He lays Craig back against the narrow bed. The same bed they’d made love on all those years ago. He takes his time, making sure that every touch, every advancement is wanted, needed. By the time he settles between Craig’s thighs, moving into the precious body heat, his skin feels ablaze, every nerve ending firing with pure euphoria.

Craig comes silently, eyes wide, locked onto John Paul’s. He falls back against the sheets with a smile on his face.

Into the gentle darkness that follows, Craig says, “Thank you.”

“Don’t be soft,” John Pauls says, still a bit breathless.

“No, I mean it. That meant a lot to me.”

He can see the honest glint in Craig’s eyes. He cards his fingers through Craig’s hair, damp and wild. “To me too. Now go to sleep. I’m bloody knackered.”

Craig curls himself against John Paul, both of them falling into a quick, sated sleep.

In the morning, he is gone.


	10. Chapter 10

**January 10, 2016. 12:18pm**

John Paul has no shame. He’ll fully admit to be currently throwing himself the biggest pity party imaginable. So big he may as well have posted it on Facebook and invited people to the event.

He’d started at home, laying around in his sweats while his phone remained obstinately silent and his texts flatly ignored. But after several hours of Myra’s pestering, he’d needed to get out.

So now he’s sat bar at The Hutch still royally peeved, drowning his sorrows with several pints of lager and a whisky shot or two.

He still can’t quite believe that Craig had left him. Again.

The thing is though, he’s mostly pissed off at himself because he’d fallen for it. Again. All of Craig’s manipulations. Those pretty words of his that end being little more than pretty lies. Even though he knows so much better, he’d allowed himself to be taken in and get caught up in the moment.

But what a moment it had been. He flushes just remembering what it had felt like to sleep with Craig again. To feel the heat of his skin, the wrap of his limbs around him. He can’t remember the last time sex had felt like such a profound statement of emotion. An intimacy that went so far beyond the physical. Last night had reminded how good it felt to feel so intensely wanted. So loved.

So loved by Craig Dean.

Yet here was, staring at the other side of that coin. Because to love Craig Dean means to deal with disappointment.

Tony gives him an uneasy look as he refills John Paul’s glass. It looks like he wants to say something, but when he sees the confrontational look in his eyes, he thinks better of it.

John Paul tips back the glass, taking several long swallows before setting the now nearly half empty glass back on the table with a wipe of his mouth.

He crosses his arms across the bar and drops his forehead on top of them. The alcohol does nothing to make himself feel better. Nothing to make Craig return his calls.

He hears the scrape of a heavy platter land near his head and the perfect, greasy smell of chips fills his nose.

He lifts his head back up, vision swimming briefly only to see Ste come into focus. He stands on the other side of the bar from him, arms crossed. John Paul hadn’t even known he was working today, honestly. But there he stands, looking a bit unimpressed by John Paul’s mid-afternoon binge, just having served up John Paul’s favorite chips with a garlic lemon aioli that isn’t on the menu but Ste would make just for him. It’s a thoroughly touching gesture. More than he should expect from his soon to be ex-husband.

“Penny for them,” Ste says, then adds with a quick grin, “Not the chips, I mean. For whatever has you moping around.”

John Paul huffs, then dips a chip into the sauce before crunching it in his mouth. It tastes divine.

“Is it Craig?” Ste asks when John Paul simply stuff another chip into his mouth glumly. “I mean, I heard he was in town and Harry said he saw you having a heated chat with some wiry bloke up in the school yard yesterday. And now you’re here drinking like a fish with a pretty impressive love bite on your neck.”

“I what??” John Paul presses his fingers to that spot Craig had spent so much time tending to the night before. “Shit…”

Ste grins at him with a twinkle in his eyes. “So what happened? I mean, besides the obvious.”

John Paul slumps his cheek onto his fist. “It’s complicated.”

“Oi,” Ste says with feigned offence. “Complicated? You and me, we were king and king of complicated. Whatever’s happened, it can’t be nearly as messed up as us two.”

John Paul smiles at him, overwhelmed by how easy this transition from enemies to friends to boyfriends to husbands to estranged partners back around to friends is appearing to be. Maybe it’s not normal or sustainable but he feels lucky for it in this current moment nonetheless.

“He called me, by accident I think, on New Year’s Eve, then showed up a few days later. I tried so hard to put him off, but I just couldn’t. It’s like I lose all higher brain function around him and I get suckered back in, every bloody time. God, I’m such an idiot.”

“No, no.” Ste leans across the bar. “There are people in your life, right? People who are just part of what makes you you. Part of your story. And it doesn’t matter how many times they may have hurt you or the number of times you swear it’s over or your family or your friends or your own head tells you it’s all wrong, you know that if they walked back into your life, all you’d want is to take them back.”

Ste’s eyes wander to the door behind John Paul. He can’t help but wonder if Ste is longing for a certain mustachioed Irishman to do just that.

“And wanting that, it doesn’t make you weak or an idiot to go back to them,” Ste says with a supportive pat to John Paul’s arm. “It just makes you human.”

*

**January 10, 2016. 5:13pm**

He’s on the couch, watching quite possibly the worst animated movie in the history of the world, nursing a same day hangover when Craig finally texts him back.

_Phone was dead. Finally got a charger and saw you called once or twice. :)_

The little emoji infuriates him and John Paul flings his phone to the other side of the couch. Once or twice, John Paul scoffs. Yeah, he’d been unrelenting because if Craig really was doing a runner again, this time he wasn’t going to be so spineless as to do it without facing up to it and giving an explanation.

“Why are the penguins singing?” He asks, directing his focus back to the telly. Matthew, his eyes glazed over, mesmerized by the antics on screen, doesn’t even respond.

His phone dings again. It takes all the willpower he to try to keep his eyes on the screen and pretending like he doesn’t care about that blue flashing light on his phone.

“Elvis impersonations? Really?” Matthew just giggles and he finally pounces for his phone.

_I need to see you. Call ASAP. xx_

This time, he truly does take pause.

What does it mean if he calls him back? Is he just giving in to helpless temptation? Chasing down something that is just doomed to bring him more pain? Afterall, Craig has to go back to Dublin at some point. So what good is starting something up again?

But then he can’t help but wonder, now that Craig seems so comfortable in his own skin, aware and older and out if things really could be different. Could Ste be right that welcoming back someone who he once loved so intensely wasn’t a sign of foolishness just a sign of hope? Perhaps all that love he once felt, that he has felt creeping into his bones since the day Craig returned, could really manifest itself in something grownup and mature and long lasting this time around.

He taps Craig’s name and his number fills the dial screen. His thumb hovers over the phone icon before he taps it hastily, bringing the phone to his ear.

Craig answers after one ring.

“Hey, are you home?” He asks as way of greeting. His words sound wind swept.

“Yeah, wait, why? Are you here?”

  
“Yeah, I just walked up. Can you let me in? It’s bloody freezing.”

John Paul opens the door to find a shivering Craig on his doorstep. Craig smiles, something sweet and a bit naughty, as if remembering what the two of them had gotten up to the night before. He steps, looking for a kiss and John Paul back away, putting his hand up defensively.

“What the hell, Craig?”

Craig looks thoroughly perplexed and more than a little disapointed. “Sorry?” He says, truly not sure how to react. “I just thought...”

“Thought what?” John Paul let’s all the day’s anger bubble over.

“After last night…”

“After you left, you mean? And didn’t return my calls all day?”

“I told you. My phone died.”

John Paul just rolls his eyes.

“I know it sounds like a line, but I’m serious. I’ve been on the phone all day making arrangements and I left my phone charger here.”

“Here?”

“Yeah,” Craig says, stating what he thinks is the obvious. “In my backpack. That I had for my flight. That I left here. By your bed.”

Now it’s John Paul’s turn to be confused. Craig laughs through his nose, shaking his head towards the floor. “You didn’t even notice that I’d left my things, did you? You thought I’d done a runner. Well, that would explain the 12 missed calls and the increasingly more passive aggressive texts.”

“Can you blame me? It’s not like you don’t have a history of it.”

Craig takes that with a grim look. “Fair enough. I should have left a note or something. I’m sorry.”

John Paul accepts the apology silently, feeling a bit like an over-reactive twat once more.

“So can I actually come in now because I’m starting to lose feeling in my nose.”

John Paul lets him in and takes his coat. Craig tries to say hello to Matthew, but he’s too entranced by the movie to do more than wave distractedly.

“How’s he doing today?”

“Fine. Yeah, you wouldn’t even know anything strange yesterday happened.”

The same can’t be said for the two of them.

John Paul can feel that day-after-the-night-before tension fluctuating between them. The nervous precipice they are standing on feels gaping wide and miles high and he honestly has no idea which way they will fall. All he knows, is that their bodies had spoken things last night, confessed things, that their voices hadn’t yet.

But now is the time to speak.

“So, you said you were making arrangements. What kind of arrangements?”

“Well, I spoke with an estate agent to get my flat ready to lease out. I’ll have to go back for a few days and pack up. Then I was on the phone with HR for…” He rubs at the back of his neck, making an exasperated noise. “Two and half hours seeing if I could get a transfer to the Chester location...”

“What are you on about?” Now it’s John Paul’s turn to be confused.

“I’m moving home. I’m moving back to Hollyoaks.”

“Why?” The word is a breathless sound.

Craig softens. “Because of you, you idiot.”

The tension evaporates. John Paul’s limbs are filled with a glowing warmth that feels an awful lot like flying. But they have been here before.

“Just like that? You’d give up your life in Dublin? For me?”

“Well, let’s be honest, my life in Dublin, hasn’t been all that great recently. And of course I’d come back for you. I’d do anything for you. I love you, John Paul. I’ve never stopped. How could I?”

It’s all too perfect. Such important words. Such a gallant gesture. John Paul can’t help but wonder how frail they might be in the end.

“I hate this,” John Paul, whispers from behind where his hands had come up to cover his face.

“Hate what?” Craig says gently, lifting John Paul’s hands away and lacing their fingers together.

“Like I don’t have a choice when it comes to you. Every time you’ve hurt me, I’ve moved on. And every time I’ve really thought that I was well and truly over you. I loved Kieron.”

Craig swallows grimly. “I know.”

“And I _loved_ Ste. I really would have spent my life with him, if things had worked out differently.” Craig nods, looking as if he’s ready to take the hint. John Paul has a momentary flashback to a sunny train platform, when Craig had worn a similarly dejected look. John Paul grins and pulls him in closer by their still joined hands. “But then you show up and prove me completely wrong.”

Craig’s posture refills with hope.

“I may have gotten over losing you, Craig but I’ve never gotten over you. Not really. And it looks like I never will. Because if we can have put each other through everything we have and find ourselves here, after not speaking to each other for ages, still wanting to be together, what kind of crazy love must this be?”

Craig kisses him quickly, a sweet smile on both their lips.

“It can’t be like before, though.” John Paul says, after the kiss breaks. “It’s not just me I have to look after anymore.”

His eyes flit over Craig’s shoulder to where Matthew is still watching his movie on the couch.

“We can’t screw it up this time. For his sake.”

“I know.”

“And I don’t even know how we begin to explain to him who you are...”

“Why don’t we start by going out on a date, yeah? Some place nice with a really long wine list and candles. Not sure we’ve ever actually done that before.”

“Take it slow?”

“Yeah,” Craig gives him a slow, crooked smile as he slips his arms around John Paul’s waist. “But not too slow.”

Not too slow indeed. Their bodies come together, his hand trailing the length of Craig’s spine. The seductive curl of Craig’s tongue around his makes him forget where they are so when Matthew says, “Daddy!” with the level of disgust only a 4 year old can muster at the sight of a kiss they break apart in surprise.

“Why are kissing Mr. Craig?”

John Paul looks at Craig. At this person who has grown up with him. Who has made mistakes, granted, but has filled his heart with the purest most exhilarating tenderness. Craig has been his touchstone to which everyone else has ever been compared. To which none have ever come close.

“Cause I love him.”

Craig eyes swell and he squeezes his hand tight.

“The same way you love me?” Matthew asks.

“Uhh, not quite,” John Paul fumbles and Craig covers a snicker.

“We’ll explain it to you when you’re older,” Craig says, which seems to satisfy Matthew enough to return to his movie.

“So, what do you say?” John Paul asks, looking back at Craig. “Dinner at Chez McQueen? We’re serving fish fingers and cheese toasties.”

This will be a long, bumpy road, no doubt. Lots of adjustments will have to be made from everyone involved. But by the joyful look in Craig’s eyes and the feeling of absolute calm John Paul feels in his heart, it just might work.

“That sounds perfect.”

“Not exactly the romantic date you were talking about, though is it?” John Paul says as he moves into the kitchen, getting ready to start cooking. Craig follows, his hands on John Paul’s waist. He whispers against John Paul’s neck, kissing the skin light, making him shiver.

“We’ll save that for date number two.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!! This has been really fun. :)

**Author's Note:**

> Oh my. My first McDean fic. Spurred from the though "Why don't they just bring Craig back for John Paul?"
> 
> Please keep in mind that we're in soap world, here. With Hollyoaks being one of the most overly dramatic, explosive soaps out there. So if JP could live through all he did, you better bet Craig will have his own stories to tell in typical HO fashion.
> 
> This is a WIP, but I will be posting weekly (if not more frequently - with encouragement!) so please do comment, kudo, reblog. Follow me on tumblr. I'm Auselysium there too.


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